Sacrifice

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Mosaic on the floor of Beth Alpha depicting the Akedah, Wikimedia Commons ↩︎

A Sacrifice is a move offering a pawn or piece in the hope to gain tactical or strategical compensation. The opponent may be forced to accept the sacrifice or may otherwise have the option to decline it.

Chess programs usually need some remaining depth left from the horizon, to find the compensation and to distinguish sacrifices from blunders, either by forced tactical combinations or by positional long term damage considered by huge positional evaluation terms, most likely king safety related. If, during a game, the opponent offers an unexpected sacrifice, the program's time management should have the "take care" flag on. It might be a good idea to don't play too fast, happy with winning some material.

Contents

Quotes

Mikhail Tal: There are two types of sacrifices: correct ones and mine
Rudolf Spielmann: A good sacrifice is one that is not necessarily sound but leaves your opponent dazed and confused
Savielly Tartakower: It's always better to sacrifice your opponent's men

Publications

Larry Harris (1975) The Heuristic Search And The Game Of Chess - A Study Of Quiescence, Sacrifices, And Plan Oriented Play. 4. IJCAI 1975, reprinted (1988) in Computer Chess Compendium
Jeng-Chi Yan, Shun-Chin Hsu, Jaap van den Herik (2005). The Sacrifice Move. ICGA Journal, Vol. 28, No. 4